T-34 going to the frontline. Crossing of the Nevsky prospect and Sadovaya street. Gostiny Dvor galleries can be seen in the background. A heavy caliber shell explosion killed 43 people on this spot on August 3, 1943.

An apartment destroyed by artillery fire. Author D. Trakhtenberg

Trolley-buses standing frozen on the Nevsky prospect. In December regular power supply to residential areas was stopped and all remaining voltage was provided exclusively to factories, hospitals and other critically important facilities. Author D. Trakhtenberg

Getting water from a hole in the ice right in the middle of the Neva river. The Point of Vasilievsky island is in the background - there you can see the Stock Exchange and the Rostral columns. Water pipes and sewers froze in December 1941, and water immediately became a valuable commodity that the starving people had to get by walking long distances to a river/canal or a street water tap. Author N. Khandogin

Farewell to a peer. Spring 1942. Author D. Tarasevich

The work of medical brigades on the Nevsky prospect. After the corpse is removed, the firefighters will wash the blood away with water hoses. Author N. Khandogin

Bidding farewell to the soldiers departing to the front. In the background you can see one of the masterpieces of Soviet avant-garde constructivist architecture of 1920s - the House of Soviets of the Narvsky district.

Children of besieged Leningrad. The poster says: "Warrior of the Red Army, save us!"

Here is a set of amazing photo collages made by a St. Petersburg photographer Sergey Larenkov. He painstakingly searched for the angle and point that the wartime pictures were taken from and managed to combine the old and the new pictures quite seamlessly.

The kids on roller scooters are riding past a fence around an unexploded mine - that's what the warning writing on the fence says.

On another picture the writing on the wall says: "Citizens! This side of the street is the most dangerous during artillery shelling".

As the German heavy artillery was located to the south of the city, and the Nevsky prospect and many other streets went from West to East, the shells either fell on the northern side of a street or hit a building on its southern side. One of such painted signs was preserved as a historical reminder of the war and is repainted every year on Victory day, May 9. In fact it is a meter away from the original place - not that it really matters though.

Here is a picture of one of these signs being painted over after the lifting of the Siege in January 1944

And here is the preserved one

These collages beside their historical/educational value also tell about the memory of these days that is still alive, and how incredibly complex is the situation with the Russians' attitude to their past and present.

As the German heavy artillery was located to the south of the city, and the Nevsky prospect and many other streets went from West to East, the shells either fell on the northern side of a street or hit a building on its southern side.

Here are some clips from a 1970ies film called "The Siege". Frankly, I didn't like it from the artistic point of view, but they still made an effort to highlight all the most important events of the Siege and did it quite literally. But their use JS-3's instead of (I suppose) KV's is rather strange, given the considerable supply of T-34/85s in the country at that time.

In this clip with a song in the background women are digging anti-tank trenches around the city in August 1941. Several tens thousands of them volunteered in the labour army to aid the army in the defending the city. German planes strafed the women with almost complete impunity as there were no anti-aircraft defenses to protect them. One of the women reads a leaflet with an authentic propaganda poem that was printed by the Germans at the time: "Russian madames/Don't dig your little holes for us/Our tanks will come/and fill them in".

This clip shows the storming of the left German-controlled bank of the Neva river that started at 11am, January 18, 1943. The German defensive positions and bunkers had been thoroughly reconnoitered, and after a 2-hour artillery barrage there was only one German machine-gun left, and it was destroyed by direct fire of the guns, that had been secretly pulled to the front line. And the troops had been trained to cross a similar distance (about 600 meters) in 5 minutes at the order of Major General Simonyak, commander of the 136rd rifle division. In fact, the number of casualties during the river crossing was probably even lower than it is shown in this clip, as all sources point out that "almost no one was killed". And the german bank was so heavily bombed it was not as slippery as shown in the film. As for the regimental band playing "The Internationale", this was indeed the sign for the infantry attack, so it's not a propaganda insert.